Posts Made By: Charles Scappaticci

The CGEM is having LOTS of problems. I'd recommend a Losmandy G11 if that's in your price range. I've had several Celestron scopes (Ultima 9.25, N11GPS, and a C14) so I am a Celestron fan.

Regards,

Chuck

A few thoughts:

First are you mainly in interested in observing planets/moon, double stars, DSOs or all of the above?

Do you live in or in close proximity to a dark sky site? Do you have an interest, time and patience to learn how to star hop?

If you're not going into imaging anytime soon, and you have decently dark skies I would go with a 10" dob. The Orion 10" Intelliscope is a good compromise between goto and strictly manual starhopping (about $700 USD).

If you have seriously light polluted skies (like I do) star hopping is miserable, I'd recommend, depending on your budget a NexStar 5 in the same budget class. I'd also recommend this over the Dob if you prefer to observe sitting.

Both of the above mentioned telescopes are alt/az rather than equatorial RA/DEC which makes it much easier and more convenient for a visual observer to deal with than an EQ mount.

As far as EQ mounts go, I hate to tell you this, but as your desire for a better optical tube goes up so will your desire for a better mount. The mount tends to be the more expensive of the two. In my opinion good equatorial mounts without goto start around the $2000 mark.

Anyway my two cents. Best of luck, and welcome to astronomy.

Regards,

Chuck